Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Forgotten Memories

This post is timely actually, but let's set things up first..

You see, around Sacramento, CA where I live there are Regal Theatres (http://www.regmovies.com/) where every Tuesday movies are priced at only $5 all day and popcorn is also $2.

Side note: Tuesdays are actually great days to go out around here and take a date, because great restaurants like Zocalo (http://www.zocalosacramento.com/) have 2 for $20 deals (a common thing on Tuesdays), and lower end places like Rubio's have deals like $1 fish tacos, or like Baskin-Robbins have $1 scoops.. but maybe this information should be shared in a different post.

So a typical Tuesday I take advantage of all the deals, and usually end up taking my mom out on Tuesdays to see a movie, have dinner, get ice cream, and watch The Biggest Loser (http://www.nbc.com/the-biggest-loser/).

What's interesting is how my mind has become over time, and how I lose memories. In fact, my friends and family often tell amazing stories about me I completely had no idea about. Tonight's movie was supposed to be 'Unknown' but we ended up seeing 'Limitless' which is why this post is timely - quite the movie that sums up how my mind often works.. the ups AND downs unfortunately.

Looking at the silver lining, those black spots in my mind again make for the interesting times where friends and family tell me stories about my life I had forgotten.

Tonight, a few quick ones from my mom.. these things I didn't really forget per se, as they would be early memories which I think many people don't have.

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First, my birth.. just saw the show One Born Every Minute (http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/one-born-every-minute) tonight for the first time so this is what triggered these stories from my mom.

I was born at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (http://www.hollywoodpresbyterian.com/en/) in Hollywood, CA - destined for a stage life I'm sure - and my brother was born at the very upscale Cedars-Sinai (http://www.cedars-sinai.edu/). I'd be jealous but just wait.. I get to spend years in the place later in life.. we both weighed 8lbs at birth.

When I was born, every time my mom pushed my heart would stop. Then they found I had a 'True Knot' for all nine months and it was surprising to them I even survived to birth. Dr. Cook - who delivered both me and my brother - exclaimed on birth, "It's a boy.. no.. a boyscout!" However it was to make light of a very dangerous situation.

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When I was still a baby, but a little older, my mom would push me around stores in the shopping carts and I was apparently happy like most babies. However one day she gave me a piece of candy, and kept going about her business until she looked down and I was still happy as can be sucking on some candy but completely red and covered in hives, struggling to breathe. Apparently she threw me in the car right away and went to my grandparent's house (rather than the hospital because you know.. these were the old days of yore) where my grandparents knew it was an allergic reaction but my mom had already thrown the wrapper away.

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Fast forward a little bit for the next story, but first setting the scene, I'll just quickly point out both my parents worked and were taking different shifts so that as soon as one got off, they'd hand me to the other as they rushed out to go work themselves.

My mom was working and my dad was with me mostly during the day at this point, and apparently something was going wrong, and I was getting sick. My mom just thought it was a three day flu, and on the second day my dad was worried but my mom said to wait one more day.. few hours later he then called her from the Ross-Loos hospital to come down right away..

I was apparently down a hall in adult ICU because of the complexity of the situation in a glass room with dozens of doctors around me where I stayed for a while. My mother describes coming up to the glass room, yelling my name and the people parted to reveal me with various tubes in my body and being told something about complete respiratory failure.

--

Apparently I was always a medical marvel of survival. There is so much more with drowning to death and resurrection, hernia, more issues, et cetera..

I find it all fascinating.. especially the part where my mom says I was in a hospital for so many years at the start of my life nonstop. So much I apparently asked one black male nurse if he was my dad. I was also drugged for all these years so it may explain a lot as well in regards to the memory thing.

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